iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

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Daniel Vella @danielvella.bsky.social · 02/10/2026

As an incorrigible city lover, I've long been a fan of @commapress.bsky.social's excellent Reading the City series, so I'm thrilled to have a story in The Book of Valletta, out in just two weeks! Pre-order at: commapress.co.uk/books/the-bo...

commapress.co.uk

The Book of Valletta - A City in Short Fiction | Comma Press

£10.99 (Paperback / Anthology) - Ryan Falzon, Clare Azzopardi, Ħaley Xuereb, Claudia Gauci , Jean Paul Borg and others

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Daniel Vella @danielvella.bsky.social · 02/10/2026

commapress.co.uk

The Book of Valletta - A City in Short Fiction | Comma Press

£10.99 (Paperback / Anthology) - Ryan Falzon, Clare Azzopardi, Ħaley Xuereb, Claudia Gauci , Jean Paul Borg and others

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Poppy Wilde @poppywilde.bsky.social · 30/09/2026

Exciting news! Myself and @bettibo.bsky.social are series editors for our UEP series on Critical Studies in Games and Culture 🥳🎮🕹♟️🥅 Feel free to reach out to us directly to have a chat about your ideas and whether they would be a good fit! More info at www.exeterpress.co.uk/collections/...

exeterpress.co.uk

Critical Studies in Games and Culture

Series editors: Bettina Bódi, University of Birmingham and Poppy Wilde, Birmingham City UniversityCritical Studies in Games and Culture is dedicated to exploring the political, cultural, and social si...

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Daniel Vella @danielvella.bsky.social · 09/09/2026

Join on Teams in 30 minutes (10.30 UK time) if you want to hear me talk about how Kant and Schiller's aesthetics are still relevant to how we understand games! teams.microsoft.com/meet/3291455...

teams.microsoft.com

Join meeting on Teams

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Daniel Vella @danielvella.bsky.social · 06/09/2026

On my way to Manchester as an invited speaker at the Aesthetics of Games Conference, which runs tomorrow to Wednesday! The conference is free to follow online for anyone who's interested. philevents.org/event/show/1...

philevents.org

The Aesthetics of Games

British Society of Aesthetics Conference – The Aesthetics of Games 7-9 September 2026 University of Manchester, UK Over the past two decades, games - both digital and non-digital - have become i...

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Daniel Vella @danielvella.bsky.social · 31/07/2026

We're still thinking about what the next steps will be after the workshop, but we're definitely planning on a follow-up or publication of some kind!

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Daniel Vella @danielvella.bsky.social · 31/07/2026

Those of us designing study programmes, putting together reading lists and writing text books increasingly face the question: what are the key texts of academic game studies? Bring your perspective to our workshop in Warsaw in November (as part of CEEGS 2026): ceegs.fsv.cuni.cz/wp-content/u...

ceegs.fsv.cuni.cz

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Daniel Vella @danielvella.bsky.social · 30/07/2026

We couldn't be happier to have Nico Delort's work on The Scholar's Codex! Can't imagine I'll ever work on a more beautiful book.

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Daniel Vella @danielvella.bsky.social · 21/07/2026

Hmm, should I get back to it? I watched up to, oh, some point in the second or third season, and was really enjoying it at first, but at some point there was a sequence of episodes that were really, cloyingly sentimental and forced and I sort of gave up on it.

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Daniel Vella @danielvella.bsky.social · 16/07/2026

It was less than one month ago that the European Data Centre Association explicitly told the EU it had to choose between AI and its climate targets as if this was even a question. Meanwhile 'the world is on fire' is not even remotely a metaphor at this point.

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Marie Vibbert @reasie.bsky.social · 16/07/2026

No science fiction could have prepared us for just how stupid the end of the world can be. "The environment was on the brink of collapse, and so, rather than deal with that, we burned what fuel we had left getting computers to scam each other for money."

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Daniel Vella @danielvella.bsky.social · 06/07/2026

Proud (co-)supervisor time! Last Friday, Ana Laura Matos Torquato successfully defended her PhD at the a Universidade Federal de Goiás (Brazil). Her PhD touches on horror, the metaludic and subjectivity, and centred on making an adventure game about the migrant experience of urban space.

Screengrab from a Teams meeting for Ana Laura Matos Torquato's PhD defense, moments after the committee announced their decision to award the PhD.

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Daniel Vella @danielvella.bsky.social · 06/07/2026

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Daniel Vella @danielvella.bsky.social · 04/07/2026

I don't follow football, but I do love a good underdog story, and since everyone's talking about Cabo Verde, it's my duty to share this remarkable compilation of synth-accented 70s funk/pop/afrobeat from the islands. Perfect summer music! analogafrica.bandcamp.com/album/space-...

analogafrica.bandcamp.com

Space Echo - The Mystery Behind the Cosmic Sound of Cabo Verde Finally Revealed! (Analog Africa Nr. 20), by Analog Africa

15 track album

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Daniel Vella @danielvella.bsky.social · 04/07/2026

analogafrica.bandcamp.com

Space Echo - The Mystery Behind the Cosmic Sound of Cabo Verde Finally Revealed! (Analog Africa Nr. 20), by Analog Africa

15 track album

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Reposted by Daniel Vella

Kim Sokol (Open for Commissions/Freelance!) @kimsokol.bsky.social · 25/06/2026

Right now the world is full of people who want to code and write and paint and film stuff and people who want to play and read and look at and watch stuff and nobody is allowed to do any of that because some unrelated third guy isn't making enough money off the deal

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Daniel Vella @danielvella.bsky.social · 24/06/2026

And Kiyoshi Kurosawa's Pulse (2001) is not only my vote for best horror film of the 21st century, but a startlingly prescient vision of the Internet as apocalyptic existential terror.

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Daniel Vella @danielvella.bsky.social · 22/06/2026

Unprecedented heatwaves are cooking us to death in our homes, the ecosystems we depend on are collapsing, and our planet is becoming unliveable, but that's a small price to pay to have the computer tell me I'm a special little baby.

Politico.eu headline from June 17 2026 saying "Europe must choose between AI and climate goals, data center lobby says"

Headline from the Guardian from June 22 2026 saying "Europe suffers under record heatwave as temperatures forecast to reach 44C"

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Daniel Vella @danielvella.bsky.social · 21/06/2026

People who have seen Backrooms and also played Persona 5: so the Backrooms are essentially Mementos, right?

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Daniel Vella @danielvella.bsky.social · 21/06/2026

People who have seen Backrooms and also played Persona 5: so the Backrooms are essentially Mementos, right?

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Dr Florence Smith Nicholls @florencesn.bsky.social · 09/06/2026

My thesis “Archaeological Game Design: Video Game Archaeology as Interpretive Play and Play Preservation” is now online and open access! You can access the official version here, however this has some figures redacted: qmro.qmul.ac.uk/xmlui/handle...

Archaeological Game Design: Video Game Archaeology as Interpretive Play and Play Preservation

Abstract: Video game archaeology is a relatively new field. This can involve studying players through the traces they leave in digital game worlds, though only limited work of this kind exists. Furthermore, the potential of these methods to record ephemeral play experiences for preservation purposes has not been widely explored. The first part of the thesis establishes the background literature on games archaeology and play preservation. The second part reports on the development of novel archaeological methodologies for preserving play. This includes three case studies; a go-along study in the massively multiplayer online game Wurm Online, an archaeological survey in Elden Ring, and a collaborative autoethnography in Elden Ring Shadow of the Erdtree. The third part of this thesis reports on the results of a player study investigating how participants interpret environmental storytelling. We report on a study in which participants (N=202) played a game about exploring a procedurally generated ruined village and were then surveyed on their interpretations. We draw on methods and theory from archaeology, a field that specialises in the interpretation of material remains, to support a grounded theory analysis of the survey responses, from which we form the theory of an archaeological gameworld mental model. Finally, the fourth part of the thesis synthesises these case studies to argue that archaeological game design brings together both the archaeological recording of player traces, as well as player interpretations of a fictional gameworld that should also be preserved. This work contributes both novel methodologies for play preservation and a new theory for how players interpret gameworlds. This work has narrative design applications, and interdisciplinary contributions to game AI, games studies and HCI.

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Daniel Vella @danielvella.bsky.social · 30/05/2026

We are! Especially proud of our great contributors and of @nicodelort.bsky.social's incredible artwork - we can't believe how beautifully this book came together. Glad you like it too!

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Daniel Vella @danielvella.bsky.social · 25/05/2026

Just received physical copies of our volume of essays on the games of From Software, out now on @tuneandfairweather.bsky.social - and it's an even more gorgeous thing than photos can convey. I was planning on doing some work today but might just stare at this on the shelf instead.

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Daniel Vella @danielvella.bsky.social · 26/05/2026

Each essay takes an in-game item as its starting point. My own contribution reads the Darksign in DS1 in the tradition of the Mark of Cain & other tropes of the wanderer and the exile in Romanticism(see also: Coleridge's Ancient Mariner, Wordsworth's 'I wandered lonely as a cloud').

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Daniel Vella @danielvella.bsky.social · 26/05/2026

Thank you! Still amazed by the design and production job Tune & Fairweather did on it (and by @nicodelort.bsky.social's beautiful art!)

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Daniel Vella @danielvella.bsky.social · 25/05/2026

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Stefano Gualeni @gua-le-ni.com · 22/05/2026

Join us in #Rome on June the 3rd for a 'Bonfireside chat' with the authors of the Scholar's Codex! The event starts at 4PM at the Polish Academy of Sciences in Rome (Vicolo Doria), feat. @domford.bsky.social @danielvella.bsky.social, @nelevdm.bsky.social & more! CC: @tuneandfairweather.bsky.social

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Daniel Vella @danielvella.bsky.social · 18/05/2026

There are few game creators I can think of whose work is as vital as Rasheed's. This is game development as an act of resistance, and it deserves your attention and your support.

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Daniel Vella @danielvella.bsky.social · 06/05/2026

Clearly Bodø ain't big enough for the both of us

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Daniel Vella @danielvella.bsky.social · 06/05/2026

I really wanted to come back this year - sad (or should I say...angry?) my schedule didn't allow it. Next year!

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Daniel Vella @danielvella.bsky.social · 05/05/2026

I love Maria Kato's beautiful artwork, packing each card with observational details of life in Niseko. And did I mention you can bid with potatoes?

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Daniel Vella @danielvella.bsky.social · 05/05/2026

Last 3 hours to back Yotei from @mightyboards.bsky.social! This is a special one, an absolutely delightful game with a real home-grown, hyper-local sense of place by a team from Niseko, Hokkaido, right down to components crafted by hand out of Niseko wood. www.kickstarter.com/projects/mig...

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Daniel Vella @danielvella.bsky.social · 05/05/2026

And then there were the times when, instead, Perugia felt like being in an @alariko.bsky.social artwork.

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Daniel Vella @danielvella.bsky.social · 05/05/2026

Also, I visited Perugia for the defense, and I've never been to a place that feels more like being in a Piranesi etching or a From Software architectural fantasia. Layers upon layers of architecture, centuries piled on top of each other.

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Daniel Vella @danielvella.bsky.social · 04/05/2026

It's not every day you see your first co-supervised PhD student defend his dissertation! Daniele Monaco traces the notion of the genius loci in Western culture and philosophy of space, and applies it as a framework for thinking about our engagement with space and place in digital game worlds.

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Daniel Vella @danielvella.bsky.social · 12/04/2026

Settler-colonialism depends on the fiction of barren land to be claimed, and this fiction can only be created through scorched-earth violence. It's no accident this is in keeping with the practice of erasing Palestinian villages from the map. www.theguardian.com/world/2026/a...

theguardian.com

‘Everything is gone’: Israel destroys entire villages in Lebanon

Rights groups fear tactic of ‘domicide’ trialled in Gaza, where entire areas are made uninhabitable, is being used again

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Stefano Gualeni @gua-le-ni.com · 24/03/2026

Play HAMM-3R! 🚀 FREE + SHORT (5-10 mins.) >> hammer.gua-le-ni.com << An experimental game about tools and technologies made with @amidos2006.bsky.social, @demigiant.com and other friends at the @indigitalgames.bsky.social! 🔨

hammer.gua-le-ni.com

HAMM-3R

HAMM-3R is a SHORT and FREE experimental videogame about how our equipment influences the ways we understand the world and act within it.

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Institute of Digital Games - University of Malta @indigitalgames.bsky.social · 17/03/2026

🌍 Worldwide game studies research connections! Find out what Matija Vigato, PhD student & research assistant University of Zagreb, thought about her research stay working with @gua-le-ni.com and @danielvella.bsky.social at the intersection of philosophy and games. 📰 www.um.edu.mt/newspoint/li...

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Daniel Vella @danielvella.bsky.social · 03/03/2026

"Oh, we created the Kill Chain long ago, but there were too many links between that sudden impulse to kill some people in the Middle East and actual children's blood in the dirt, so we've now shortened the Kill Chain to be 'faster than the speed of thought.' Efficiency, you know?"

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Daniel Vella @danielvella.bsky.social · 03/03/2026

It's obvious, we're lethalitymaxxing. Get with the program!

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Daniel Vella @danielvella.bsky.social · 03/03/2026

*taps the sign with increasing weariness*

Text from a 1979 IBM internal training manual that says "A computer can never be held accountable. Therefore a computer must never make a management decision."

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Daniel Vella @danielvella.bsky.social · 02/03/2026

Sure Europe might have had some reservations about the US with the whole Greenland thing, but there's nothing like some good old-fashioned imperialism in the Middle East to bring old friends together.

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Daniel Ahmad @zhugeex.com · 01/03/2026

To understand what's happening in Iran today, you have to know about the history of Western intervention in the country. In the early 1900s, the British secured oil rights in the country until 1993, where they only agreed to pay Iran 16% of the total profits. This was seen as an unfair deal. 🧵

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Dana El Kurd @danaelkurd.bsky.social · 01/03/2026

A journalist asked me today if the war would make the middle east more safe, given the Iranian regime's belligerence. I explained that until the root causes of conflict - Israeli warfare & occupation, and Arab authoritarianism - are addressed, even (unlikely) regime change in Iran won't do much.

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Daniel Vella @danielvella.bsky.social · 24/02/2026

If the idea of pursuing a Masters in game studies in Malta, with analysis, design and tech streams, sounds good to you, join our online info session later today!

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